“Painter, sculptor, writer, musician, and for all we know dancer and magician, Vahe Berberian practices his multiple talents with respectful gravity and, at the same time, expressive abandon. Thus his paintings, which have been labeled “minimalist” because of their spare compositions and atmospheric voids, are filled, near to the brim, with gestures, notations, veritable diaries of thought and motion. Vahe invites us to decrypt his myriad markings, but the markings themselves defy translation: you either know right away what they say to you – and perhaps to no one else – or you puzzle eternally over their literal significance. Their formal significance, however, keeps you engaged, and you find interpretation, only to lose it again, then find another, then lose it, in a never-ending drift of meaning that very likely mimics the process by which Vahe reasoned these images into being to begin with. That’s why he paints – not only to say the things he needs to say, but to watch them float, expand, and metamorphose like clouds into things he never thought of saying. Our impulse is to call these paintings “hermetic,” closed in sense to all but their maker; but in fact we as much as Vahe are the determinants of their meaning. They are messages Vahe puts in bottles and sets on a psychic sea; they are saturated with the spirit’s brine.”

Peter Frank

WHAT: The Armenian Community Center of Laval Presents ‘Baron Garbis,’ an original play in Armenian, written and directed by Vahe Berberian
WHEN: Friday, October 10 & Saturday, October 11 at 8:30 pm. Sunday, October 12 at 7pm
WHERE: Vanier College Auditorium. 821 Ste-Croix Ave. Montreal, QC
HOW: For tickets and more information contact Tamar Poladian 514-913-6767 or Hasmig Bilemdjian 450-682-5231

WHAT: Armenian Youth Center of Toronto presents ‘Baron Garbis’
WHEN: Saturday, October 18 at 8pm, and Sunday, October 19 at 7pm
WHERE: 45 Hallcrown Place, Willowdale, Ontario M2J 4Y4
HOW: For tickets and more information contact Liz Balian 416-587-3319 or Karnig Hasserjian 416-500-1694